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MathGraph

Understanding graphs is an essential part of building number sense.Further, it's an essential part in analyzing data that's been graphed out.The application MathGraph is free, and really allows students to divein and manipulate a graph in order to understand what's happening.When you first open up the application, you startwith a linear graph that is y equals x.So it has a slope of one, and it's positive.Here, students can choose a variety of graphs from as simple asa line graph all the way down through a logarithmic base ten graph.In addition to choosing the type of graph, they can also go into theDetails button in the upper left hand corner and they can manipulate the graph.

One thing I love to do with students is bring this up and use them slider and just quickly change the slopeof the graph and have students make observations.I'm going to click the Slider for the slope, and I'mgoing to go ahead and just make it a little bit higher.Here, at a slope of ten, my students can see that thegraph is much steeper than when it had a slope of one.Further, I can even go into negative numbers,so I'm going to drag this down until I get to negative three.Negative 3,1's pretty close.So here my students can see that when the slope's negative, the graph goesfrom high to low as it moves from left to right across the paper.

Further, I can click the Advanced button, and quickly add a b or y intercept.Here, if I choose to increase the yintercept, I can notice that my graph shiftsup, and if I choose to decrease into negative numbers, I can see that my graphshifts down.Once my students have had the opportunity to graph out whatever it isthey'd like to graph, my students can also go into the Quiz Me function.This is going to ask them quiz questions about whatever graph they have selected.Because I have a linear line graph selected, all ofthese questions are going to ask me about linear line graphs.In my own classroom, the way this graph can be used is, I will ask mystudents to take lab data and actually matchthe graph to the data that's being presented.

So they have to choose the correcttype of graph and then manipulate the variables of the graph untilthe graph represents what it was that we found in our experiment.Then students can go through and analyze what's the graphtelling us, what are the relationships between the data points.I hope this free application can be relevant toyou and your students as you start exploring graphing.

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Author

Released

10/3/2013

iPads are becoming a common sight in the classroom, in the hands of both teachers and students, and the number of educational apps is growing everyday. Learn how to get the most from the iPad as a classroom teaching tool in this course with author and educator Aaron Quigley—and enhance student achievement, save time, and be more productive. Aaron shares his favorite apps for students of all levels, from categories like science, math, English, and others designed specifically to help teachers. Use this course to decide if these apps are right for you before you purchase them for the classroom.